A Good Understand Have All Those Who Do (Psalm 111:10)

This morning I wrote on Facebook:

As I think through my list of Christians I admire, both in the present and over the last 2,000 years—both the ones close to me and the ones I only hear about or hear from—one thing really stands out to me. God can’t possibly care about how we interpret the Bible, just whether or not we do what it says.

I suppose it would only take George Whitfield and John Wesley to prove that premise.

I returned to my newsfeed after posting those words and found Facebook reminding me that exactly six years ago, I quoted John Wesley as saying:

Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin, and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen; such alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven on earth.*

It seems impossible that this was coincidence. Perhaps when the Psalmist wrote, “A good understanding have all those who do,” he did not mean “Those who obey will gain a good understanding,” but “Those who obey prove by what they do that they already understand well.”

*I got the quote from RevivalList.com’s daily email, which did not give a source. I tried to find out where it is from using internet search, but it is quoted without a source so often I could not find the source.

About Paul Pavao

I am married, the father of six, and currently the grandfather of five. I teach, and I am always trying to learn to disciple others better than I have before. I believe God has gifted me to restore proper theological foundations to the Christian faith. In order to ensure that I do not become a heretic, I read the early church fathers from the second and third centuries. They were around when all the churches founded by the apostles were in unity. My philosophy for Bible reading is to understand each verse for exactly what it says in its local context. Only after accepting the verse for what it says do I compare it with other verses to develop my theology. If other verses seem to contradict a verse I just read, I will wait to say anything about those verses until I have an explanation that allows me to accept all the verses for what they say. This takes time, sometimes years, but eventually I have always been able to find something that does not require explaining verses away. The early church fathers have helped a lot with this. I argue and discuss these foundational doctrines with others to make sure my teaching really lines up with Scripture. I am encouraged by the fact that the several missionaries and pastors that I know well and admire as holy men love the things I teach. I hope you will be encouraged too. I am indeed tearing up old foundations created by tradition in order to re-establish the foundations found in Scripture and lived on by the churches during their 300 years of unity.

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